All entries for Friday 23 June 2006

Blair to attack the 'Justice Gap'

Writing about web page http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5108158.stm

From the BBC, we hear that Blair, after meeting campaigners for 'victim's rights' we are to address the apparant 'justice gap'. Apparantly, the rights of criminals are 'outweighing' the rights of the victims. Well maybe so, especially when victims call for the right to execute/castrate/flog or whatever.

Also, we hear that there "is a huge and growing gap between the criminal justice system and what the public expects from it". Well that I agree on, or at least there is a gap between public perceptions of the criminal justics system and that inconvienient thing called reality. Talk to you're average Joe (no offence Joe..) on the street and he'll tell you crime is out of control in this country, not enough people get locked up, and judges are becoming 'soft' in terms of sentencing. When you mention that crime is falling year on year consistantly (despite the waves of new criminal offences introduced under Labour), the prison population is "within weeks" of reaching capacity (according to the cheif prison women in an interview in the New Statesman the other week..I forget her name), and that sentencing has in fact gone up rather than down in terms of length served in prison, one gets an awkward silence…

…followed closely by the heckles of being a pansy liberal falling at the shoes of blood thirsty murderers, and worse, peodophiles. There's just no telling some people..

It all reminds me of one time when I was 15–16. In a corner shop a woman approached me to ask me to sign a petition for a 'Sarah's Law', whereby addresses and phone numbers of peodophiles are made available to the public.. I told her quite frankly that I didn't believe in the vigilante justice that would be the inevitable consequence in some areas of the UK, and that any civilised justice should be left up to the courts. She called me a peodophile. I left.. Again, there's just no talking to some people..

: 23 Jun 2006 10:21 |  Tags: Crime Uk |  Comments (14) |  Close comments |  Report a problem